Fireflies in the Dark
by ct522
Summary: Loosely based Max/Liesel storyline in The Book Thief. Set in a town near Munich, Germany during World War II, Peeta Mellark appears on the Everdeen's porch in the middle of the night. The family soon finds themselves harboring a Jew at a time when doing so is punishable by death. Despite the odds, Katniss will risk anything to keep him safe. Written for Speak Your Language Day.


**I want to thank the fleet, literally, of people who helped me edit, pre-read, and translate this fic. They include solasvioletta, plumgal1899 and bubblegum1425 as my betas. On the translation side, these ladies also pointed out historical discrepancies, plot gaps and just general mucking up of the language: LittleEvilIsa as Italian translator, Madamemarquise as translator into Slovak and Otrascosasseries (AlwaysEverlark) as Spanish translator. In addition, my dear husband provided the title to this fic. It's the first one he's read and being a bit of a World War II buff, he seems to think it's good :). **

**Note on writing - I do not have the umlaut (the double-dot vowels) on my keyboard so I used the convention of replacing the umlaut in writing with a "ue" combination in words like "Fuehrer" and "ae" in the case of "maerchen." It may seem small to us but in German, it's a big deal!**

_**Fireflies in the Dark**_

_**Summary: Loosely based on the Max/Liesel storyline in The Book Thief. Set in a town near Munich, Germany during World War II, Peeta Mellark appears on the Everdeen's porch in the middle of the night. The family soon finds themselves harboring a Jew at a time when doing so is punishable by death. Despite the odds, Katniss will risk anything to keep him safe. Disclaimer: I own no part of The Hunger Games or The Book Thief.**_

"_**Closing my eyes doesn't help. Fire burns brightest in the dark." **_

**- from **_**Mockingjay**_ **by Suzanne Collins**

_**January, 1943**_

When we found the young man collapsed on our doorstep on that dark, winter's night, my mother was beside herself with fear and worry. This was not the time to take in strangers who wandered the town in the middle of the night after curfew. But my father took one look at the young man and the documents he carried and made my sister and me swear we would never tell anyone about who had arrived in our home.

"But think of your daughters!" she begged her husband. "Do you want to be the father of corpses?"

"My life does not belong to me! I owe his father everything. I must take care of the boy." He said this with great conviction as he wrung his hands, the limp in his lame leg becoming more pronounced as he paced the kitchen. Amongst the people in this part of town, we most understood what a debt meant and did not like to have balances in our ledgers. I helped my father bring the young man inside while my younger sister, Prim, boiled water for the special tea leaves my mother used with the sick. Our small family had become complicit in a crime that could result in our deaths.

**XXXXX**

It was cold and damp in the basement, occasional beads of condensation shimmering down the stone of the walls. The young man, Peeta Mellark, was already weak. My father worried that he would become fatally ill but we could do very little without arousing suspicion. Father had taught me to hunt and to love the lonely forest that surrounded our village and served as a buffer between us and the town of Munich. This was before he left for the the Great War that brought him back so crippled, he could no longer go out and hunt alone. I scurried like a mouse into the dark woods with my tiny lamplight, woods which, to an outsider, looked like a homogenous carpet of evergreens but to me was a cacophony of wildly savage detail. These same woods yielded up food for my family when the war rations were not enough to keep us alive. At 16, I was still girlishly thin but my slight frame made me as swift as a ghost. I snuck into a nearby farmhouse and filled a sack with hay - the dry, crisp material occasionally getting stuck on my worn winter coat. I muttered an apology for my thievery before disappearing into the safety of the trees.

It took some doing to get the sack back into the house as it was close to dawn and the streets had ears and all the eyes of the people were trained on each other, paranoia and mistrust having settled into the spaces where friendship and hope once resided. The government encouraged this mistrust, for as long as we feared and suspected one another, we would not examine too closely what the officials did to us. But I managed it, much to my mother's terror and relief. She'd sewn a large blanket together and we proceeded to stuff it with the material, which would keep the young man dry and warm. I helped my father bring it downstairs and, with some gentle movement, we managed to lay him on the course, makeshift hay mattress, wrapping him in extra duvets and even an old rug that my mother had stored away. His bony arms and flushed skin filled me with fear.

"Papa, he has a fever!" I whispered. "Will he be okay?"

"I don't know, liebchen _darling_. Only time and your mother's soup will tell." He smiled gently as we returned upstairs.

**XXXXX**

My mother's soup was no ordinary meal. She was the daughter of an apothecary before the war and a trained midwife, so she knew what herbs and concoctions to put together to heal a sick person.

She would have had an easier life perhaps but she married my father against the wishes of her well-to-to family. My maternal grandparents were well-respected in the community and my mother was beautiful in the way Prim would be - silky blond hair and clear blue eyes that would have made the National Socialist Party proud. They were nothing like my father - an olive-toned man with straight, black hair, heavy like obsidian and in possession of a handsome, angular face. It was at one point suggested that he was of gypsy ancestry, and that I bore the stamp of that lineage as well but a thorough official investigation into the matter had yielded what we already knew - my father was of fairly typical Bavarian stock.

However, my mother's obstinacy in marrying my father resulted in her being cut-off from her family's financial support. Her struggle to run a household on the salary of a laborer, even with her supplemental income as healer and midwife, often made furrow lines of worry appear on her otherwise doll-like skin. I never heard my mother complain about her circumstances, however. Her devotion to my father was so complete that I secretly hoped one day to find someone for whom I would be willing to give up so much.

Mother cared for Peeta while I was at school but she also had appointments to keep and a household to run, so much of his care fell to me in the evenings and on weekends. I was fascinated by him from the very first. He had a downy head of soft, blond hair that my mother said was too long – she would give him a trim as soon as he was well. His appearance was not unpleasant to me – despite his general clamminess in those first days, his hair seemed to shine like spun gold and his features were strong yet gentle. In the middle of one of his fever-induced dreams, his eyes opened. I thought for sure the summer sky had snuck inside our dreary little basement and taken up residence there, for the blue was like no other color I'd ever seen. I know. I've spent my entire life comparing other people's eyes to his.

I spooned water and soup between his dry lips, trying to get him to eat. He was stubborn, even in his half-living state. I whispered to him. I cajoled him. Sometimes, I became so aggravated with him, I pinched his nose to make his mouth open, telling him _You have no choice! You saukerl bastard, we are eating less and less so that you can have your soup! You will eat or so help me…!_

But many of those moments gave way to a solitary contemplation in which I stared at his sleeping form and a sudden desire to sing to him overtook me. Father said I had a beautiful voice that made the birds in the field fall silent, which I thought was rather an exaggeration. Once, when he woke from one of his hallucinations, he trained those eyes on me and smiled dazedly, "Sind Sie ein Engel _Are you an angel_?" I wanted to tell him _No, I'm not an angel by any means! I'm a poor German girl freezing in a basement singing to a dying young man because the Fuehrer has decided that we must all starve for der Vaterland. I disobey my mother and sometimes resent my sister. I am a hunter and a thief and some days, I am so angry I could throw a brick at an officer's head but I stay quiet out of fear for my family. And for some unnamed reason, I want you to live, more than I want almost anything else in the world. _ I wanted to tell him these things and just barely opened my mouth before his eyes fluttered shut again.

**XXXXX**

He arrived at our home clutching a small black leather book in his hand. He held it close like a talisman, never letting it go, except when he sunk into the deep sleep of fever and illness. One day, not being able to resist my curiosity any longer, I slipped the book out of his hands and carefully leafed through it. It was full of sketches – a green plant that I could almost feel growing out of the page; an exotic, trilling bird, the sound already dancing in my ears. The sketch of a roaring oven just beneath my fingers reminded me of fresh bread and cakes. He loved people and drew them engaged in various mundane activities such as washing or baking. From his sketches of buildings I learned he loved symmetry and order. He drew rocks and hands and common objects. There was also poetry interspersed throughout the pages. From these I learned that he feared death and longed for love. I thought I had understood beauty – to me, Prim was my ideation of true beauty - with her clear blue eyes and soft pale skin surrounded by a halo of blond hair so unlike my olive complexion, dark hair and grey eyes. But he stretched the boundaries for me through his art. I learned that he, too, was beautiful. And I wanted him to live.

_**February, 1943**_

The day he finally opened his eyes with some understanding of the world around him, I covered my mouth to keep a squeal of joy from escaping me. I felt my smile would shatter my face and when I reached out to touch his skin and found it was no longer on fire, I thought my heart would burst with unrestrained joy. I raced up the steps to fetch my father from the kitchen, pulling on his hand. "His fever's broken!" I half-laughed, half-sobbed. My father gave me a tender look and wiped a tear from my cheek before descending into the basement with me, my mother and sister close behind.

My mother, who was the true healer, examined him and found that indeed, his fever had broken but he was still weak. "He will need meat to strengthen his blood." No sooner were the words out of her lips but that I ran to fetch my coat.

"Where are you going? The street is full of soldiers!" Prim said as I darted to the door.

"I'll be fine. Don't worry, meine kleine Ente _my little duck_. I will be back soon." I scampered out of the house, almost slipping on the frosted ground and disappeared into the woods even with the knowledge that game would be scarce. I dug my bow and arrow out from a hollow log - I did not have the proper permits to own such a weapon so I risked punishment each time I ventured out to hunt but I did not care. Today I begged for a miracle, searching with the desperation of a dying person, praying to please let me find anything – a rabbit, an otter or even a squirrel or two. I whispered Peeta's name like an incantation and it seemed to work. When I came upon the small wild boar, I felt fortune on my side that day.

My mother almost fainted when I returned with the beast under my coat. I looked like a pregnant woman walking through the streets but meat like that would have only resulted in my having to fight off others for it, so scarce was it.

"Meine Guete My goodness! A pig so close to the town!" my mother marveled at the sight. I simply smiled secretly to myself. Peeta had brought me good luck.

**XXXXX**

As Peeta became stronger, he told me about his family. His father was a baker who was conscripted to fight on the Russian front during the Great War of 1914. Mr. Mellark had taken a bullet and died to save my father's life, making Peeta's mother a widow with three small boys and a bakery to look after. Mrs. Mellark was actually the orphan of Jewish parents who had died when she was very young. The SS were tipped off and an investigation launched to determine her Jewishness. She was not as fortunate as my father - the official inquiry resulting in the confiscation of her property under the Nuremberg Blood Laws. When the SS came during the night to remove the family, Peeta had barely escaped with only his sketchbook and an address and did not know the whereabouts of his remaining family. I could tell this pained him deeply, this guilt of surviving when his family most likely had not. I tried to encourage him for I am sure, had it been me, I would not have been able to endure it.

He told me these things as I fed him the broth my mother had made from the pig's fat. The smell was temptingly good and my stomach, which had not tasted meat in months, growled with hunger but I was eager to feed Peeta. The pig had come to me because of him, I told myself, so it was only fair that he eat first.

He watched me as I brought the spoon up to his mouth, his gaze discomfiting me, making my hand shake. A bit of soup dribbled down his lips and I raised the napkin to pat his skin as if he were a baby.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"I will be 17 in May." I said quietly. "And you?"

"I'm 24. I must seem ancient to you." he smiled at this, causing me to spill a bit of his soup onto his shirt.

Quickly cleaning him, I fussed in irritation, "You are worse than a baby to feed. You don't sit still!" I was flustered and could not rationally explain the source of my agitation.

He chuckled quietly. "Even when you complain, you have the voice of an angel," he said, his own voice still raspy from his recovery. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks, flooding my skin as I cast my gaze downward.

"I am no angel." I whispered as I scooped up another spoonful of soup.

"Yes. You are! I would be dead without you. I followed your voice when I was sure I would slip away."

My hand shook so much that I set my spoon down. "Well then, now you must eat so that you may become strong. I fear the war will not end very soon."

The mentioning of the war was like an anvil falling amongst the clouds. It was the reality. He would need strength to survive, for Peeta Mellark was a Jew and death followed his people like a ravenous tiger.

**XXXXX**

With regular care, Peeta became strong enough to sit by himself. As soon as he could, he asked for a pencil and began sketching almost compulsively in his book. There were times when I simply sat with him and watched his skilled hand sweep across the page, the images taking form as if conjured by a magi. We spoke often but just as often we simply kept each other company, me studying my school books while he sketched or jotted down stanzas of poetry, some his own, some that he drew from memory.

Much of his sketching had to take place during the day, for at night, we were shrouded in darkness, the risk of lighting a candle too great to entertain, though there were times I was rebellious and brought a small lantern down to him for the earliest part of the evening. These evenings were magical for the light of the lantern was reflected off of his impossibly long eyelashes, a sight that made me sigh, as if there were a firefly captured in our cold, dark basement. I thought of the _maerchen (fairy tales) _ that my father still told Prim, of forest spirits that illuminated the night, mischievous but free in the vast kingdom of the forest.

In those evenings that glowed with the slim light of the candle and the surreal brilliance of his eyelashes and hair, I released my fear of everything and felt another secret feeling settle in my chest that warmed me to the tips of my ears and toes. I was so captivated by this warm glow that I did not notice Peeta sketching me until I sensed his fixed attention on me.

"What are you drawing?" I asked with curiosity.

Peeta gave me a secretive look and pulled the sketchbook close to him. "Just keep doing what you're doing. I'll show you in a bit."

I laughed. "I don't remember what I was doing!"

"You were reading your grammar book. Keep doing that."

I put my head down to continue my studies but my concentration had dissipated, leaving me impatient and nervous. After what I thought was an exorbitant amount of time but was likely only a few minutes, I looked up again. "I can't just stare at my book if I know you are drawing me!"

Peeta shook his head, then scooted close to me, his proximity causing my heart to lurch painfully in my chest. "It doesn't matter, Miss Impatient. I've finished. Do you want to see?" he asked playfully.

"Ja, klar _Yes, of course_! Show me!" I exclaimed.

Smiling shyly, he showed me the sketch that he'd made. I had never been particularly enamoured of my dark appearance except perhaps for my eyes, which I'd inherited from my father and were a rare color of grey. And yet his pencil had rendered me beautiful. In the sketch, I was looking down in profile, my dark braid resting over my shoulder. It was a look of utter peace, every worry line filled out and relaxed. In his hands, I positively glowed.

"Do you really see me this way?" I whispered.

A furious blush spread across his features. "I would need the talent of a Durer to draw you as you truly are."

_**August, 1943**_

It was close to midnight when the sirens sounded. We had not had a bombing in our town but we had drilled and drilled for the eventuality until we almost did not believe the sirens any longer. However, there was an urgency in the streets that made us understand that this time, the threat was real. We donned our coats and slipped on our boots, grabbing the prepared bags from behind our doors. At the entrance of our house, I froze.

"Peeta?" I asked my father as he leaned heavily on his cane.

"No, Katniss. If he goes to the bunker and is discovered, he will wish he had been buried under the rubble."

I blanched at his words and wanted to run down to the basement, to let my voice be the last thing he heard before the bombs landed but Prim clung to me like a porcelain doll and for all the pity and longing I felt for my boy in the basement, I had to attend my sister. My entire body shook with terror for Peeta and I wanted to wail in desperation at the first round of bombs but my sister rooted me to this reality. Taking her hand, I ran toward the bunker with a heart that weighed as heavily as the clanging metal church bells in the town center.

**XXXXX**

When we returned to our home in the wee hours of morning, it was intact, as was every other house in our neighborhood. Prim had fallen asleep in that sweet way children have of sleeping through even the worst catastrophes. My mother and father took turns carrying her until we were in our room. When Father set her down in her bed, I quickly removed her shoes and brought the duvet up to her chin. I waited impatiently for my parents to settle down to sleep before slipping out of my bed and running as quickly as I could without making a sound. Shutting the door of the basement behind me, I listened for Peeta and for a panicked moment, I heard a thunderous silence until a slight shuffle from the corner caught my attention. He was standing behind a storage cabinet, trying to shrink in the sliver of darkness created by the shadow of the metal door. It was the first time I'd seen him upright since he first arrived and it was clearly a struggle for him to stay on his feet.

"Why do you hide?" I said as I ran to him. In relief, he let his body sag against mine as I led him to his straw mattress.

"I didn't know if it was you or the SS." He said quietly.

I hadn't considered the possibility of a police sweep during a bombing raid but one could never be too careful. "We must find a good hiding spot in case it ever comes up." I whispered as he reclined against the makeshift pillow.

Peeta stared at me with a look that haunted me. It was so exquisitely sad that it distorted his features. "I am dangerous for you and your family. If I am found, you will all be arrested."

I gathered the blankets around him and tucked them beneath him. He shivered, for being in the basement was like being outside. "You mustn't think of that. We will not get caught nor will we be arrested." I began to shake with the idea of Peeta being discovered, of what they would do to him. "But you need more exercise to make you strong. You must walk more. And stretch. Your muscles will cramp and whither if you do not." I rambled on and on, trying to keep the fear that had accompanied me the entire night in the bunker at bay, a fear that caused my voice to teeter dangerously on the edge of tears as I fidgeted with his blankets.

Peeta stilled my busy hands, gazing at me with that look that made my stomach clench. "You are quite a nag," he said, a gentle smile curling his lips.

"I am not a nag." I said in a panic bordering on hysteria. "I'm simply telling you…"

"Ich liebe dich, Katniss Everdeen _I love you, Katniss Everdeen_," he interrupted me with a whisper.

"I…" I stopped, the words dying on my lips. Then they came – the tears I had repressed since the sirens went off, when I could not come to him. They began as short gasps which turned to sobs. Peeta pulled me into his arms and I gripped him around his too thin shoulders, his long, shaggy blond hair tickling my forehead. A tremor went through me at my body's acknowledgement of his substantiality, the very realness of his existence, the confirmation that for now, he was safe and sound.

He pulled back to look at me, his hand stroking my hair. ""Du liebst mich. Real oder nicht real _You love me. Real or not Real_?"

"Oh, Peeta, naturlich! Real!" I laughed with an explosive gasp of relief. "Ich liebe dich auch _I love you also_."

"Good. Then I will become strong. I will exercise and eat your mother's soup." Here he made a face that could only speak of the infinite patience required to eat the same meal for months on end, which elicited another laugh from me, "And I will survive this infernal jest because all madness must come to an end." He brought his lips to my ear, and the shiver this elicited was embarrassingly acute. "I will marry you, Katniss Everdeen and you will be mine."

I nodded at this and when he pulled back again, he kissed me. I had always imagined my first kiss – sometimes pressing my lips to my arm in curiosity, daydreaming of the moment. What would it be like?

It was like this – the cold of the basement receded to the background, overtaken by the roaring sound of my heartbeat in my ears. The war faded before the flush of heat between our lips. It was concrete and warm and somewhat uncoordinated but I drank from that drought of bottomless hope, clinging to the springtime on his lips until there was no more breath left between us.

_**March, 1944**_

Peeta grew strong, persistent like the dandelions that would soon burst forth around our town in spring. Mother cut his hair regularly and it exposed his strong cheekbones and exquisite profile. He no longer required nursing but no one questioned the persistence of my attentions, the constant visits to the gloom of the basement. Father was somewhat despondent – the future was a treacherous place for dreams to live in and sent Prim to keep me company for the sake of my virtue. But Mother saw herself in me, in my pig-headedness to love without reason and pulled me aside one day, not to admonish me but to make clear that for ones such as us who chose to sow love where no love should grow, great suffering could await us but also great rewards.

"I am not a hypocrite, daughter. Your road will be more painful than ours but I cannot begrudge you the young man. It is war after all, and the world seems to end every day." She kissed my forehead when she said this and I flung my arms around her, thankful that I had earned her understanding.

So when Prim ran inside from school one day in a panic, it took us a few moments longer than it should have to rouse ourselves to action, for we had reached a kind of complacency in our long vigilance.

"There are soldiers searching the basements of the houses!" she said breathlessly.

My father grabbed his cane and shot down the basement stairs as quickly as his injury would allow with me quickly in tow. We hid the mattress behind the storage closet and moved Peeta to the place we had prepared for him. I suggested the closet in my room if the SS were searching basements but Prim only shot me a look of hopelessness. "They will search the entire house, Katniss! Don't you understand?"

Finally, we set up a bookcase in the corner behind which he crouched, with the National Flag appended haphazardly before the spot like an afterthought. It seemed so precarious to me that I almost insisted on staying behind with him but my father was intractable and forced all of us to regroup upstairs and await the arrival of the officers.

The minutes ticked by before the pounding on the door brought all my nerves to the surface. Visibly shaking, my mother pulled me back to let Prim answer the door. As she unbolted the locks, my mother hissed in my ear "Do not be the reason he is discovered!"

I nodded vigorously and took a deep breath, steadying myself. It was _Oberschaerfuehrer_ Cray, a a corrupt official who somehow survived the endless personnel purges to maintain a stable position in the ranks of the local SS. He was accompanied by an officer who I did not recognize, a squat man with beady, dark eyes and a sweaty paunch who stared at me without shame, causing goosebumps to burst out on my skin from disgust.

"Herr Everdeen! It is good to see you. I haven't seen you at the public gatherings." He said as he tipped his hat to my mother, Prim and I.

"I have been unwell." My father responded, indicating his leg.

"Ah, yes! Well, it is an injury well-earned in the service of the Fuehrer." He said dismissively. "And work? Are you finding much of it?"

This was the game my father hated playing – the forced obsequiousness, playing to authority. "Not much, I am afraid."

"Well, you would have more success if you joined the party!" boomed Cray. He then dropped his voice conspiratorially. "It is not too late for you and your family to join our Great Family." My father simply nodded as he watched the other officer make his way up the stairs to the bedrooms. "May I inspect your basement, please?" he said, as if it were a request we could turn down.

My mother, Prim and I waited for what seemed like a thousand years as my father and Cray took their time in the basement. I shivered from a fear so terrible, I almost threw up from the nausea it induced. When the second officer returned from the upstairs rooms, my mother dutifully offered him tea, which he declined, instead staring intently at me in such a disturbing manner, my mother stepped between us with the pretense of straightening my braid. "_Swine Pig!_" she muttered furiously under her breath.

Finally, after almost an hour, Cray and my father returned, discussing beams and supports. My father was as relaxed as if he had been asked to take a stroll through the marketplace. After a small digression into matters of harvest, the Officers took their leave. As soon as the door was shut, I burst out of the room and ran down the stairs to the place where I knew Peeta hid. Yanking the flag off of the spot where it still hung, I flung myself into his arms, touching his face, arms and shoulders in quick succession as if to confirm that he was in one piece.

"Are you okay?" I asked impatiently.

"Yes, I am. It's fine, Katniss. They did not discover me," he said soothingly.

"I'm not leaving you ever again! I wish I could put you in a safe place where no one can ever hurt you!"

"Indeed," he said as he kissed me but there was something distracted in the way he did it that aroused my suspicion.

"You have something on your mind." I said warily.

Peeta's eyes became focused again. "Only you, my love. You are the only thing on my mind."

_**April, 1944**_

He did not say goodbye when he left. Still worse, he did not let me say goodbye to him. Later, my father told me that Peeta was afraid I would break his resolve and make him change his mind. He would not have been able to leave me if he had had to persuade me first to let him go. So, enlisting my mother and father in his deception, I woke one morning to find the basement empty of everything except for his black sketchbook. For him to have left the book behind meant that he feared he would not return.

Flipping through the pages, I saw he had added sketches to the book. They were mostly sketches of me – feeding him soup, laughing, watching him sleep. In one I am singing. He sketched himself touching me in such a provocative way, my body burned with the idea of his hands on me. It made me desperate and uncomfortable and hungry and agitated all at once. But he was not here to relieve me of any of it. He was not here to explain what he was thinking when he sketched one picture or the other. But the worst one was the poem:

_**Nachtgedicht***_

Dich bedecken

nicht mit Kuessen

nur einfach

mit deiner Decke

(die dir

von der Schulter

geglittern ist)

dass du

im Schlaf nicht frierst

Spaeter

wenn du

erwacht bist

das Fenster zumachen

und dich unarmen

und dich bedecken

mit Kuessen

und dich

entdecken

It would have hurt less if someone had shot me.

I had no interest in food or drink. I took care only to speak to my sister, who was as innocent as I was in the deception and just as devastated when she, too, had found her dear Peeta had left. I hardened my heart towards my mother and father, who had essentially held the knife that had carved a hole in my heart. Instead, I went from one thing to the next with a heavy ennui that kept me from enjoying any part of life. We went to the book burnings, the rallies and the parades for returning soldiers. We waved off the ever younger boys and older men who were sent to the bloody maw of war, never to be seen again. The fighting lingered, the bombings razing parts of the city, even leaving a crater in our streets. The machine of war marched on and I was one of the walking dead amongst the grieving and the dying.

_**December, 1945**_

Germany surrendered to the Allies in May, 1945. It was a terrible summer for our people and when the cold returned to the land, it brought with it hunger, reconstruction, and the taking of accounts of all the lives lost. When the pictures of the liberation of Auschwitz were circulated in the media, followed by Dachau and Buechenwald, I prayed that death would come for me. The Nuremberg trials had begun and the accusations were so horrid, I did not think the world could contain so much terror. In every emaciated body, in every stinking, crammed boxcar, I saw Peeta's face. The pile of shoes, the empty suitcases, the shredded pajamas, the mountains of corpses - I took all the pictures with me to bed and refused to go to school for weeks. I stared at a point in the ceiling and only interrupted my immobility by the sudden eruption of screams that my pillow could not stifle. Prim climbed into bed with me in that period and was the only thing that kept me from leaping from the roof.

My father came to me one day and kneeled beside the bed, begging me between bursts of agonized tears to forgive him, that he had allowed himself to be swayed by fear; he had failed as a man, as a father and as a protector. He should not have let Peeta go and now, if he had ended in one of those death camps because of him...but his voice failed him and he could not finish. There was no way any of us could complete that sentence. I never quite forgave him but I understood that war made us less noble than we thought we were. At least, by giving a name to the black thing, he gave me the way to begin liberating myself from the cloak of my depression and from the constant desire for oblivion.

_**June, 1946**_

I had finally completed the Gymnasium _high school_, despite the numerous interruptions to our studies brought on by the reconstruction. I was lucky to find a place at the University in Munich - the closest city to my town - to study teaching. I would be the first in my family to earn a University degree, a fact that made my mother and father practically swoon with pride. It was important to study, father said. _Education insulates us from ignorance, which is one of the roots of evil in this world. _He did not mention that it was educated men who orchestrated the destruction of so many lives during the war but he was an optimist about the human race and even if I did not share his enthusiasm, I could allow him to indulge it.

My father found a new passion that year. The local government opened up the public gardens in parcels for lease to local families. It was a small lot of perhaps 50 square meters but my father was enthusiastic about planting a vegetable garden together with other town families who had leased plots for the same purpose. The earth was a deep rich black and full of worms and fecund plants that filled the air around it with the smell of life. I did not allow myself to think of it but it was the smell that I associated with Peeta – vegetative, vibrant and alive. And it only brought me back to the brink of madness.

Father sent Prim and me to gather fruits and vegetables that grew on our lot to eat or preserve. It had been so long since we had eaten a decent rhubarb strudel that when my mother finally made one with the first pick of the season, tears of joy came to my eyes. To be kept like animals without care for the soul was the first step in dehumanizing us and we had gone too many years in this manner.

I remember the day as if it was yesterday - June 21, 1946. I was returning with a basket full of salad and parsley - mother would be making roasted _bratwurst _and _spaetzle_ that evening - my mind on the renovation of the Kathedrale in the town center when I found Prim sitting on the step of our home. She had become such a lovely girl - tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed with a temperament as sweet as her pink cheeks. Her very existence had saved me many times over in those last two years and my love for her was boundless.

But when I approached the step, I noticed her eyes were red from crying.

"_Meine kleine Ente! Was ist los_? _My little duck! What is wrong?_" I said, dropping my basket before kneeling down before her. "Why are you sad? Is everyone okay?"

Prim's face broke into a wide grin. "Katniss! It is a wonderful day! Come inside - you have a visitor." She took my hand in her dainty one. My heart began to race with a hope it did not dare to give voice to. What was all of this about?

When she opened the door, my eyes swept the kitchen, taking in the scene. My mother stood behind my father at his usual seat. As if my mind did not want to admit the truth, I did not look the stranger in the face at first but at the hand my father clasped in both of his. The blond hairs. The callouses. I shook my head in disbelief and his name fell unbidden from my lips.

"Peeta."

I backed away as if I'd seen a ghost. "It cannot be," I said in desperation, looking from my father to my mother to Prim before I searched for an escape from this land where the dead came back to life. I backed away slowly towards the door and before anyone could stop me, I was off like a gazelle, running towards the woods.

**XXXXX**

It was not a clean escape. I heard my name being called as I ran as quickly as I could, seeking the solace of the forest. I had buried him a hundred times, mourned him, then put him in a secret compartment in my heart to shield myself from the possible manner of his death. And yet out of that box he had sprung fully formed. Where had he been? Why hadn't he come back sooner?

I stumbled when I entered the woods, tripping over fallen branches and rocks until I landed hard on the ground. I tried to gather myself up quickly but there he was, like a warm wind from the west, his hand at my elbow helping me up. I am now ashamed to say it but my first feeling was anger and I flailed at him with all the rage that had built up in my heart since the day he left me. I punched and slapped and screamed until I fell to my knees at his feet, sobbing uncontrollably. He sat next to me, his face red and scratched from my attack and he too was overwhelmed by tears, crying beside me.

"Why did you leave? How could you?" I wailed. "I saw the camps, the people inside..."

Peeta wiped his face, his breath coming in pants. "Katniss, sooner or later, I would have been discovered. I couldn't risk your family's life, your life. You could have been arrested. Starved. Your family sent to the camps. And yet you are here, more beautiful than when I left you, if I had ever thought it possible." He stared at me with a curious mixture of reverence and hunger. "I'm sorry I hurt you but I am not sorry I left."

I breathed deeply to steady myself, taking the moment to study Peeta. His grey summer suit was worn at the cuff and his collar was frayed but he was otherwise so much healthier than when he'd left. He'd filled out and his hair had been properly cut, which I'm sure pleased my mother to no end. I reached my hand out to trace his features, my fingers lightly ghosting over his skin. Gone was the angular, sick young man that had appeared on our doorstep two years ago and instead a powerful, healthy man had taken his place. His eyes, however, remained the same brilliant, jewel-like blue that I remembered and loved.

My anger was spent. What was left beneath it was the perpetual longing for him that had never faded, which demanded satisfaction. I pulled him to me and kissed him, taking him by surprise but only for a moment before he responded. Gone were the gentle kisses in our frigid basement, the fumblings of new love. He kissed me with desperate intensity, holding on to me like a man holds on to life after being sure he would die. We sank to the ground and I felt the hard earth beneath my shoulder blades as I kissed him as loudly and for as long as I desired. There was no impetus to hide anymore, not his ethnicity or my love. The light of day now belonged to us.

**XXXXX**

Peeta had managed to cross the Rhine and enter France one month before the liberation of Paris. He is even now, after so many years, at a loss to say exactly how he survived his journey. He hadn't seen the sun in more than a year but he credited the generous rations my mother had given him - cheese, cured meats, bread, preserves - whatever her pantry could spare him, for his survival. He was also fortunate that it was summer so traveling was at least easier save for the constant terror of being caught.

When he arrived outside of Paris, he was arrested for being a German, even though he was a Jew and ended up in a Parisian prison. He was grateful even for his imprisonment for it was nothing in the least like the camps to the east. When the Americans had finished their task of securing the city, they turned their attention to the hodge-podge of prisoners interned in the prison. They understood right away that he was no agitator or SS officer but a poor, desperate young man. He was in possession of no useful information outside of the recipe for the proper way to bake Kartoffelbrot, a specialty in his family. They soon put him to good use in the prison kitchens, where he remained for almost a year until they could figure out exactly what to do with him.

When he was finally released, he was provided the worn suit and a pittance for his troubles. It was not much but he set out to come back to me, a goal he had to defer until it was safe to travel again. That day, on the forest floor, he showed me the sketch that he carried with him, his favorite one, in which my face is drawn down-turned and in profile, my braid lying across my shoulders. "No one could imagine that a vision so beautiful could also be such a nag!" he laughed and for the first time since he left, I laughed also.

**XXXXX**

And he has kept me laughing for the last 60 years of our life together. He was a good son to my parents and is a doting brother to Prim. I cannot imagine the agony of families who lost so much to the War, how unbearable the guilt was for the generation of my parents. And I think, if I was insane with grief over Peeta, what could it have been like to lose a child, a family, or an entire community? I grieve in my heart for the country of my youth, for the terrible crimes no one can wipe away. So we offered up our lives, lives in which we tried very hard to live with decency, in compensation for the ones that were lost.

We tally our blessings each day, noting every instance of kindness and human decency. I only have to begin with my husband who is benevolence embodied in human form despite what he experienced. And we never fail to remember the good we have seen and mark it, to make a list of those things and honor the goodness in the retelling of those stories to our children, Willow, Liesel and Rye, and the grandchildren - anyone who will listen. It is repetitive, even tedious after so many years.

But I have learned that there are far, far worse games to play.

_**-Frau Katniss Mellark **_

_**Munich, Germany**_

_**September 24, 2006.**_

**XXXXX**

_**Night Poem***_

To cover you

not with kisses

but simply

with your blanket

(which has slipped from your shoulder)

so that you're not cold

in your sleep.

Later

when you

are awake

to shut the window

and embrace you

and cover you

with kisses

and discover

you.

_- from Love Poems by Erich Fried_


End file.
